


Morte

by Kannika



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Gen, future arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22853755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kannika/pseuds/Kannika
Summary: In an alternate future, on a vacation that doesn’t seem to end, Nana receives a letter she can’t read.
Relationships: Sawada Iemitsu/Sawada Nana, Sawada Nana & Sawada Tsunayoshi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Morte

**Author's Note:**

> I am forever and always having feelings about the fact that in the future with Byakuran, nearly everyone thought Tsuna was DEAD. And also about the fact that Nana was left in the dark for the whole series. And the whole dysfunctional family, really. 
> 
> I miss you, KHR.

Not that she doesn’t like spending time with Iemitsu, but this is the strangest getaway Nana has ever been on.

The hotel they’re in, for starters, is a far cry from the five-star resort she had secretly hoped for when he said they were going on a trip. It’s not like it’s falling down, but all the walls and hallways and floors are the same color scheme and it makes it a little dizzying and drab to look at. The walls are off-white wallpaper with little markings in black; the floors are dark brown hardwood, but not the nice kind like she remembers from home; the door is a shade lighter with a brass doorknob. The bed is clean, and smells nice, but its sheets and blankets and pillows and decorative end pillows are all the same nearly-white. She’s ready to beg the next maid who comes in to change them for a blue blanket, but she’s not sure they have any even if she asked.

Also, they’ve been all through the hotel, but Iemitsu has asked her not to leave the premises and go into the city. When she asked him how they were supposed to sight-see from inside the hotel room, he gave her a bright, boyish smile and said he had a surprise he was working on for her, but she had to be patient. 

Nana believes him. She just has to be patient- because apparently, his surprise is taking weeks to put together, so it’s probably going to be amazing when she can actually see it. He’s gone most days working on it, so she reads all the books she didn’t have time for at home and gossips with the nice maid who cleans up their room when she comes in and waits.

She’s cleaning the room up when she finds it. She doesn’t mean to snoop or anything- she’s just spent so much time cleaning back at home that not using her hands makes her feel lazy, and she wants something to do. And when she finds the letter, halfway burned through and buried in the ashes of the fireplace, it surprises her. They haven’t been here all that long, and that would probably mean somebody forwarded it here after it was sent to their house in Japan.

It’s been read by Iemitsu already. He left in a… weird mood, when he went to work on her surprise today. He had left in a hurry. He probably left after reading this. 

Nana thinks about leaving it, if it was meant for her to read it he wouldn’t have thrown it in the fire, when it occurs to her one of the people who do know where they’re staying is Tsuna- maybe it’s from him. She hopes it is. He’s so busy, as a boy in their young twenties ought to be, and she hasn’t seen him for… close to a month, now that she thinks about it, and that makes her heart ache a little. He continued to work in Namimori even after he grew up, just to keep visiting her, but his visits got scarcer and farther between before they left on this trip. He was busy at work, he kept saying, he couldn’t come visit her this time, and then Iemitsu whisked her away on this trip in between calls. 

She hasn’t even spoken to him on the phone in weeks. So if this letter is from him, or one of his friends talking about him, she wants to read it.

The letter is several pages long- and she catches Tsuna’s name in a quick glance, written in Romaji, and that raises her hopes, but she can’t read any of it. It’s in Italian, and she doesn’t speak any Italian at all.

Neither does Iemitsu, though, or Tsuna, or anyone Tsuna knows. The letter becomes even more of a mystery, and even more pressing.

That’s when Iemitsu catches her, when she is sitting in front of the fireplace holding the letter just in front of her eyes, like if she gets close enough it will translate itself to Japanese so she can decipher it. 

“Nana, what are you-“ The look on his face is as close to anger as she has ever seen. It breaks her heart, but she doesn’t know why.

“I just…” She doesn’t understand why he is so upset. “I just wanted to know how Tsuna was doing. I… saw his name.”

His face softens. “Of course. That… that makes sense.” He leans down and takes the paper from her- tenderly, as it has already begun to crumble, fragile from its close encounter with the flames. He’s deliberately not trying to read it, though. “It’s just… it’s not from him. It’s from a friend of mine in Japan. He wrote this in Italian because I told him that’s where we were.” 

That… doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but why would Iemitsu lie? Nana good-naturedly frowns at him. “Then why did you throw it in the fireplace instead of showing me?”

He laughs, loudly, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “I saw that the letter was written in Italian, and I knew you didn’t understand it. I didn’t want you to feel… I don’t know, embarrassed?”

That makes more sense, and Nana laughs, too, leaning forward. “So, do you know enough Italian to read it? Did you look any of it up? How is Tsuna?”

Iemitsu’s face changes for a split second, to panic, but just as something catches in her throat it’s gone. He looks back down at it. “A little bit. The weather’s good, Tsuna’s doing well and- and has something to tell us when we get back, and the kids send their love to you. That’s all I could understand.”

He looks back up at her and smiles, but it’s forced, and that sends a shiver of warning through her. Iemitsu doesn’t force smiles very often- and not this badly.

One word, a repeated one, itches at her. She has to ask.

Carefully, she says, “Do you… know what ‘morto’ means?”

His face flashes through ten different emotions, each more heartbreaking and raw than the last, before settling on a careful neutral. “What?” 

“I saw it in the letter several times.” She swallows. She can’t explain the horrible feeling it gives her to say that word out loud. “Right next to Tsuna’s name almost every time, with a word I assume would be ‘is’ in Italian…”

She meets his eyes. He looks like he's going to cry. 

“Tsuna is…”

He swallows heavily. “Tsuna is… successful.” His breath hitches on the word, but he manages to smile nonetheless. “Tsuna is successful. That’s all it says.”

That’s not all it says. Nana knows this, for a fact, even if she doesn’t know _how_ she knows. Maybe because she knows Iemitsu. She knows for all his aloofness he loves Tsuna heart and soul, adores him, and he’s never looked like he’s fighting to keep from cracking straight down the middle while talking about him before. Now that she thinks about, his face lit only by the smothered embers in the fireplace and a little light from the windows looks a hundred years older, and fractured with something he hasn’t shared with her. There’s gray in his beard. He hasn’t slept in weeks. Maybe months. How did she not _see it?_

Tsuna is not successful, is what his eyes staring into hers, willing her to understand, tell her. Something is rising the back of her mind, something she has never felt before in her entire life. An aching sense of urgency. Of wrongness. There is something here.

But… this is her husband. He wouldn’t lie to her. Not if something was wrong with Tsuna, who she misses terribly, who she loves more than her own life. He would tell her. Something else is bothering him, and he’s working through it on his own, and when he’s done trying that he’ll tell her. She’ll trust in that, if nothing else. 

So Nana smiles back at him, shoving down that sense that’s only awakened because it’s dark in the room and everyone worries about their child when they go too long between visits. “Ah.” She says. Believe him. She has to _believe him._

Iemitsu smiles back at her, and without breaking eye contact crushes the fragile paper into gray dust.


End file.
